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Try Appealing To the
Disenchanted Atheist
Tim Lowe

From: "Tim Lowe"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: November 21, 2002 7:46 PM
Subject: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index

Hello,

I just came across your website. I have to admit that I am a bit shocked by your use of historical figures' quotes to support the cause of atheism. I wonder if your visitors know how terribly out of context most of the quotes are. I realize that you feel that you need to justify your position in some way, and that historical figures somehow give you credence, but your use of them out of context does the figures a disservice and a disservice to yourselves as well. When whomever reads your quotes and puts stock in them and then finds out that the quotes are used inappropriately, they'll feel disenchanted with you.

Maybe you should try more generic forms of recruitment to attract atheists. I think that appealing to the disenchanted might be a better way to further your cause. I am myself a Christian and historian and have, I feel, a decent feel for the motives of the Enlightenment thinkers. How much do you know about them? Not much, evidently. You'll pardon that did, I hope. Digging deeper you'll see the tangible effects on the philosophes, they all died disenchanted and disappointed at their inability to affect social change and convince the masses that they were themselves superstitious and misguided.

The American Enlightenment figures, however, (thought this is scarcely represented on your website) had at most a strong faith in God and at least a Deist outlook. This same reason that you tout as destroying God, at least as indicated by the Epicurus quote, was that which led the French philosphers to their ultimate disappointment. Their science has killed our world. Their philosophy has done much, much less. I challenge you to give faith a try. I'm sure you get lots of e-mails such as this, but heed in them what you will. Please e-mail me back.

Atheists puzzle me.

Thanks,
Tim Lowe

From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To:
Subject: Re: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: November 27, 2002 10:40 AM

Atheists puzzle me

I guess we're even, then. How could anybody go around telling others that thus-and-so is true when he doesn't really know whether he knows what he's even talking about? I couldn't live with myself! If I cannot show a proposition to be true (or at least likely), then I will not go around telling people that it is, in fact, true!

For example, it is well-known that during the last half of the nineteenth century a popular form of charlatanry involved forging quotations and other reports, putting words into the mouths of America's heroes. It is also rather easily established that a great majority of this activity involved placing pious sentiments into the mouths of heroes whose orthodoxy was widely qustioned or openly doubted. The heroes who have been victim to this fraud the most have been Lincoln and Washington.

I also have positive testimony showing that both men did not act the way you'd expect a pious Christian to act (prayer; public proclamations; widely known as religious).
 

I have to admit that I am a bit shocked

Shocked!?

(Shudder!)

Oh, no! Here comes some of that emotionally charged language!

When can we get some mail that sounds like it was written by a human and addressed to a fellow human, rather than by that company which, for a fee, supplies two-bit newspapers with "letters to the editor" and phone-in talk shows with "callers"?
 

... out of context ...

and

... out of context ...

and

... used inappropriately ...

Umm,

Alas! The seeming-to-be-everywhere-at-once cry of a certain brand of fundamentalist Christian who writes to the Positive Atheism Forum.

And never once has such a Christian demonstrated the truthfulness of this accusation against anything that we have allegedly taken out of context. (As a matter of fact, never once has any Christian even bothered to try!)
 

I am myself a ... historian

How come I couldn't find a trace of you or any of your work on the Internet, having exhausted the strings "tim lowe" and "timothy lowe" in four major search engines?

Are you a real historian or are you a lay historian (one who does not work in the field and likely does not have a degree in that field, but, rather, gets his education by reading the works of real historians and others)?
 

support the cause of atheism

and

you feel that you need to justify your position

and

historical figures somehow give you credence

and

forms of recruitment

and

to attract atheists

and

further your cause

Here is an example of the kind of Christian we deal with often in this Forum: We have been told by this Christian that we use these quotations in order to "support the cause of atheism," that we feel the need for "credence" from historical figures to "justify [our] position." He says we are trying to "further [our] cause" (which he says is "atheism"). Finally, in order to "attract atheists" (new atheists, we presume), he says that we utilize "forms of recruitment."

Ummm -- that is the exact opposite of what we say about our motives in our FAQ and elsewhere. Do you think that (perhaps) this fellow simply stumbled onto a couple of quotations while using the search engine, saw the word "atheism" at the top, and then, while scrambling to look for our e-mail address, noticed the big, bold "Webmaster" link on our Front Page? We designed this link to alert us to the high likelihood that whoever uses it has not spent very much time checking out what we have to say about ourselves, about those who take it upon themselves to oppose us, and about the rest of our sleepy civilization. It turns out that the vast majority of people who clicked this link have tended to be in a great big hurry to dash off an angry letter in an attempt to "show those people a thing or two." Of course! That's why we made the link so huge!

This is not to suggest that this is what you did, only to point out the strong, very strong connection between that "Webmaster" link and hastily written condemnations of us which have little if anything to do with what we actually say. The connection is so strong that I like to point it out every time I can remember to do so.
 

First off, we do not propagate atheism!

We even recommend not becoming an atheist unless truthfulness means more than dignity, yea, more than life itself!

We are here to serve only those who are already atheists, who already lack a god-belief, that is, those who already are no longer theists. Since the Big List of Quotations section does not reveal its own purpose, where do you come up with the idea that we constructed it for the purpose of "supporting the cause of atheism"? Since what you say not only doesn't appear anywhere on our entire web site, and since the opposite of what you say appears throughout the project's self-description, and since you've already gotten several things wrong here, there remains but a single choice:

(If this be the case, then rest in the comfort that you are not alone in this behavior: you have plenty of company.)

We do give some clues, however, as to a possible motive for creating the Big List of Quotations: Besides trying to eliminate the bigotry that we endure (antiatheism is the most widespread and thoroughly legitimized [read: "institutionalized"] form of bigotry on the scene today), we also serve as a resource for those atheists (not fundamentalist Christians) who wish to study their heritage as atheists!

So, in lieu of trying to squash antiatheist bigotry (our first goal) and in lieu of stumping for State-Church Separationism (our second goal), all that's left is our third goal, serving as a resource for those atheists (not fundamentalist Christians) who wish to study their heritage as atheists.

But this Christian insists that we do it for the purpose of "supporting the cause of atheism."

Here is how much this Christian has paid attention: One of the primary tenets of this project is to point out that

and that

Their science has killed our world. Their philosophy has done much, much less. I challenge you to give faith a try.

So then, are you suggesting that we (1) believe a proposition because to believe that way would bring us personal advantage (as individuals or as a species) and (2) disbelieve other propositions because believing that way would bring us personal disadvantage (again, as individuals or as a species)?

No. As a man of morality, as a man of integrity, and as a man of honesty (the main points of the philosophy of Positive Atheism as we advocate it here), I prefer believing a proposition either because it can be shown to be true or because it is simply likely to be true. Similarly, my favorite reason for disbelieving other propositions is because they cannot be shown to be true, because they can be shown to be false, or because they are simply likely to be false.

I challenge you to jettison your faith and give truthfulness a try: experiment with the concept of assenting only to those propositions that either can be shown to be true or that are likely to be true.

At minimum, you will be much more likely to avoid the embarrassment of having written letters such as the above!
 

I think that appealing to the disenchanted might be a better way to further your cause.

In light of the exchange immediately preceding this one, I feel that appealing to the disenchanted might be appropriate if and only if I felt that the majority of atheists and materialists were, in fact, disenchanted. According to my experience and my studies, those who simply lack a god belief and who do not trust claims of the supernatural are not disenchanted at all.

The ones among us who are disenchanted are usually those who act the way you accuse us (me) of acting. The disenchanted atheists are those who pretend to know best how others ought to run their lives, who go about trying to recruit others to this or that set of core values. They are disenchanted because doing that simply does not work! The reason I refrain from doing this is not to avoid disenchantment. Rather, I refrain from trying to recruit people because I think it is just plain wrong to do that to people.

This is what you appear to be doing to me, however! According to the Bible reading I have done, this is precisely how Christians are commanded to act!
 

I am not disenchanted. The reason for this is that I frankly don't give a dying duck what you or anybody else believes. I would consider it a monumental waste of my time to try to change you even if I thought you were capable of change!

However, if you should ever snap out of it; if you should realize that religion is a bunch of hooey; if you should that the "history" books you purchased at the Bible store and in the church foyer were lying to you, that they are nothing more than political propaganda, plain and simple, designed to exploit you for political gain; if you should come to understand that you don't really know that a god exists or that a Jesus lived and rose from the dead or that the Apostle Paul was not an opportunistic charlatan (as was commonly reported by several early Christian sects who rejected the claims of Christ's divinity), if you cannot verify any of these claims but are "just taking it on faith," and if you come to realize that it is dishonest of you to assert as true claims such as these, the validity of which you actually know little or nothing (the incidental or accidental truthfulness of such assertions failing to justify or excuse a person who behaves in this manner); in short, if you should wake up and see that you, as a human, innately demand of yourself a much higher moral standard than what is taught and practiced in any expression of the Christian faith; that is, if you decide to become an atheist, then we will (hopefully) be here for you -- we ozr someone similar.

I repeat: if you should ever become an atheist and need some grounding during this most harrowing of experiences, the deconversion process, then some hardy atheists will have committed themselves to the sacrifice of making themselves available to you.

• If you, as an atheist, find yourself unwillingly supporting religion (which you now think is, at minimum, a bunch of hooey and at most, dangerous teaching to which you don't want your kids exposed) either with your tax dollar or by implication as the citizen of a city, state, or nation which endorses religion; if, for example, your child is required to attend a class that has "In God We Trust" posters, to recite a Pledge of Allegiance that or says "one nation under God," to spend money that says "In God We Trust," that establishes national days of ritual by urging citizens to participate in a rite that is suspiciously favored only by those religions advanced by the government's leaders (such as the rite of prayer, practiced mainly by those monotheists who believe they worship a personal deity), that posts, in courtrooms and court lobbies, religious edicts of a very specific sect (such as a Reader's Digest condensation of the King James translation of the Protestant rendering of the first stone tablets edition of ten items from among the hundreds of edicts found in the religious instructions honored by some but not many of the ancient Hebrews -- which, by the way, have been "fulfilled in the Cross of Christ," according to most modern Protestants! -- and two of which, by the way, are not even practiced by most modern Christians, namely those regarding the carving of images and resting on Saturday), if your kid gets in trouble with the law and is coerced by the criminal justice system to become involved in either a Christian rehabilitation program or the Twelve Step programs, even if she or he is merely coerced by having his or her privileges suspended if she or he refuses to cooperate with these religious missionaries disguised as social workers, in short, if you should find yourself in these or even more drastic situations, then we can help you make a big stink about that (as we recently saw happen with the Newdow case).

• If you find yourself a victim of antiatheist bigotry (like I did last year, when I was driven out of my apartment of over eight years by a Christian bigot that the manager married or like I did in 1988 when I was jailed for refusing, on religious grounds, to participate in a government-sponsored faith-based rehabilitation program), we can sympathize. Better than that, we have created opportunities for you to join us (or others) in trying to figure out ways to eradicate antiatheist bigotry.

• If you wish to know a bit about your heritage as an atheist, such as the roots of thought which led to modern atheism and the reason why atheism remained intellectually untenable until the middle of the nineteenth century, we have more than enough resources to give you a strong foundation in embarking on that study: our collection is presented with that in mind.

This material is not there to make atheists out of Christians! Like I said, I wouldn't waste my time for any Christian: it's none of my business what you believe. But putting this thing together has been no easy deal for me, considering that before illness struck early this year, just my handicaps slowed me down to one-third the speed of an able-bodied person with the same skills.

• Finally, if, after deciding that religion is a bunch of hooey, you find yourself being pestered by former associates to "come back into the fold," etc., or even by those nagging doubts, literally those reflexive urges to crawl back into the womb of group-think, we are here. We are here to help those who have already decided to jettison their religious faith, because the process of deconverting is nothing short of harrowing, prompting us to empathize with anybody who cannot cut it, but who eventually reverts to the "faith of their fathers," so to speak.

That is why we're here. We are not here to make atheists out of Christians, as you accuse us of doing.

This latter aspect is a rather dangerous occupation, to be sure, and the tables are decidedly stacked in favor of the Christian. Very few Americans need to walk more than a mile or so to find a Christian whose job or calling it is to help former atheists adjust to the faith-based mind-set.

However, just mount a shingle at your door stating that you offer services helping former Christians learn to make decisions using only their own powers of reason combined with the opinions of others in a form of consensus reality and you are in for some big trouble -- I promise!

I wonder why that is!

I wonder why Christians go about their business unmolested, for the most part, but atheists must still remain in the closet even in the most casual of circumstances. I wonder why so many atheists wouldn't even reveal their atheism to the cashier at the market! Why is it that the atheists so afraid of the Christians? What have the Christians done to the atheists to prompt them to act this way?

Do Christians have that little faith in their own faith that we atheists have, as a result, developed a conditioned reflex to keep our mouths shut about our atheism?

Why can't atheists be free? Why can't we openly admit our atheism without fear of serious repercussions

Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Seven years of service to people
    with no reason to believe